Signal Confirmation—New Horizons met its rendezvous in the Kuiper Belt

Brian May, lead guitarist of the rock band Queen and astrophysicist shows a video with a new song he wrote for the New Horizons mission, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland—NASA/Bill Ingalls

Just after 1030 hrs EDT NASA and New Horizons made their comm handshake. We now have a probe investigating within the Kuiper Belt over 43 AU (an AU, astronomical unit, equals the average distance between Earth and the Sun) from home. This is an amazing mission since it is now investigating the primeval rocks, ancestors to our planet, exciting further news surely awaits. Paradigms will likely be upset as new understandings begin to develop out of their latency. Science is dynamic!

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO, left, and Brian May, lead guitarist of the rock band Queen and astrophysicist, pose for a photograph after a New Years event, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland—NASA/Bill Ingalls